


Lost by Choice

by charmedtomeetyou



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reality Show, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-12
Updated: 2019-03-19
Packaged: 2019-11-16 05:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18088412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charmedtomeetyou/pseuds/charmedtomeetyou
Summary: Two broken people sign up for a reality show meant to push you to your absolute limits. One of those people welcomes the challenge - and the partnership. The other isn't so receptive.This is the Naked & Afraid Captain Swan AU that absolutely no one asked for.





	1. The Getting Lost Part

In retrospect, a televised challenge with a little less dehydration and mosquito bites would have been a smarter choice. Maybe one that didn’t involve literal hunting for food and water. But Killian Jones was always one for a challenge. He was a survivor. He had already lived through a thousand different hells (hyperbole); he could live through this one, too. Except he hadn’t slept in 3 days, hadn’t had clean water (aside from opening his mouth in the rain) in the same amount of time. Oh, and he was slightly in love with his very naked partner who very much despised him.

Yeah, Killian being a survivor and all, he should have chosen to audition for  _that_  show. Not Naked and fucking Afraid. 

But  _noooo_  he’d been determined to prove himself. And to whom? He didn’t have anyone around anymore to impress. Liam was dead. Milah was dead. Bae made it perfectly clear Killian should  _consider him_  dead. He’d lost everyone and everything and apparently the long-lost emo kid inside him decided he needed to take that metaphor and make it literal and audition for a show where he was cold and he was ashamed, lying broken on the floor.

Wait, no, that wasn’t it.

(The delirium had set in.)

Surviving in the worst of conditions had drawn him to this particular (idiotic) challenge, but there was something, too, in the partnership aspect. Being paired with only one other person, just as stranded as you, to finish out the task… maybe it was his complete loneliness or, again, the part of him who couldn’t resist a challenge, but it intrigued him. How do you put all of your individual experiences together to form a bond, a team, that would keep them  _alive_  for 21 days without another soul?

Then he was paired with Emma fucking Swan.

Let it be known: Killian wasn’t a creeper. He didn’t pick  _this_  show so he could stare at some tits for 21 days. The naked part was entirely about being stripped of all comfort and all  _help_. Nothing sexual about it, you wankers. But he’d have to have been blind to not see how goddamn gorgeous this woman was. Toned, lean, yet soft. An innocence about her, but a regal kind of confidence all the same. She was like a Disney Princess and a intergalactic thief all in one. So  _perhaps_  his cock twitched just a bit upon meeting her, but he’s a fucking gentleman and he could keep it in his damn pants.

(If he’d had pants.)

This was his tactical partner, and nothing more.

They didn’t exactly hit it off, but their skills were nothing to scoff at. Killian’s past in the Royal Navy, his service abroad, and his extensive knowledge of tropical vegetation made for a great foundation for survival. As for Emma, she was the scrappy one. She was an improviser, a problem-solver, and a bold woman who’d lived without a home for many years. A fact that, quite simply, made Killian sad. He might not have his home anymore, but at least he’d  _had_  one. Once upon a time.

But Emma wasn’t a fan of his  _feelings_ , it seemed.

“Wipe the pity off your face, Jones. I’m fine. I survived. And I’m going to survive now, with or without you.” For the first time, Emma awkwardly crossed her arms over her breasts, as if to maintain modesty, and full-on scowled at him. They hadn’t been what you’d call  _friendly_  yet, but they didn’t exactly know each other yet, either. Of course they’d have to ease into it.But it seemed Emma wanted to just ease right back out and jump into  _hostile_  territory.

She was skilled as hell. Quite the badass, in fact. When Killian identified the best place for a shelter, she immediately laid out the plan to build it. And then just… did it. He looked at the map and figured out the best place to get freshwater, and as soon as he set out to gather it, she lit the fire. That first day they were productive as hell and those 21 days were looking like a cake walk.

And then there was the nearby hurricane. That first night, about an hour after sunset, the rain began. 

And it never. Fucking. Stopped.

It was freezing, way too cold to sleep. And when he suggested to Emma that maybe they huddle for warmth, she shot razor blades out her (beautiful) eyes at him. “I’m not looking to bed you, Swan, we’re just trying to survive here. Princess might need to accept that despite her beauty not every man is looking to fuck her,” he’d snapped around 3am, the wind whipping so strongly he was sure their roof was going to fail at any moment.

“Princess? I’ve been working my ass off here and definitely pulling my weight. Don’t act like I’m some spoiled bitch who just came here looking for a strong man to protect me. Nobody saves me but me, OK? And if I don’t want you to touch me, you fucking  _won’t_.”

There was probably a story there, probably something about as tragic as her having lived without a home, but he wasn’t going to touch it. There was no benefit to aggravating her further. They had the skills for this. They made a good team, even if she didn’t quite see it yet. And he could shove down all attraction for the sake of survival. He would be fine.

(What he wouldn’t give for a rice allowance and a reward challenge. Damn him for not sending that tape to CBS instead of Discovery)

The next two days were more of the same. Emma’s fire had long been extinguished by the rain and they’d yet to locate anywhere dry enough to attempt to build a new one. The wind was constant and kept changing directions, so even the portions of the jungle with the most canopy were still drenched. The freshwater Killian had found was muddy as hell and couldn’t be drunk before boiling it - and with no fire, they had no means to boil.And food - well, they were running on probably 120 calories between them across the 3 days.

Their dynamic was, frankly, exhausting. They’d be cooperating just fine, talking strategy or accident prevention (it was business, all business), and then he’d offer to do just one too many things and she’d shut down. The fact that her walls seemed to attract him more was… problematic. And annoying. He needed one blasted  _healthy_ relationship in his miserable life. This woman, though stunning in every way, clearly had baggage so massive she needed a 757 all to herself and yet all he could think was how he wanted to be her pilot. (“I’d fly the fucking plane myself, Jones,” she would probably say. If she were in his head. Was she? Is she? Was he talking out loud by accident?)

He was tired and though the rain had stopped for a while, the mosquitoes had sure as hell started and he was the most uncomfortable he’d ever been in his entire life - and he’d stood at a funeral between his (dead) lover and her husband/murderer, half covered in poison ivy from the previous week’s (ultimately “successful”) search for her.

(No, he shouldn’t have chosen  _Survivor_  instead. He should have chosen  _staying the fuck home and watching these complete wankers on the goddamn telly_.)

(The British was strong when he was pissed.)

(God, a pint would be nice right about now.)

The lack of sleep, the bug bites, the constant war with his partner, it got to him. It broke him. He snapped. Those were the easy ways of describing the tirade that began that afternoon after her shutting him out once again.

“Why the hell are you even here, Swan? Have you not seen this fucking show before? One man. And one woman.  _Together_. This wasn’t a survive on your own thing. Ever! You knew from the start you were going to have to interact with another human. Of which you seem utterly incapable! This place is hell but it would be 100% better for me if you weren’t fucking here!”

Emma sat, seemingly gobsmacked, still curled with her knees at her chest, sitting upright against their shelter. But it didn’t take long before the fire almost literally shot from her eyes.

“Absolutely agreed! This place would be  _much_  better if I weren’t stuck with  _you_. I was hoping that I’d be given a partner who didn’t know what he was doing and tapped out in a few days so I could just do this thing alone.  _But_. There’s nothing to say I still can’t.” At that, she stood, grabbing her satchel and awkwardly playing with the mic pack around her neck. “If you could just hand me the map, I’ll get out of your hair and I’ll see you again for extraction in a few weeks, kay?”

Mmmkay, maybe he was rethinking that whole “falling in love with her” thing. Because right now he mostly wanted to set her on fire.

“Seriously, Swan? You’re running away?”

“I’ve been reliably told it’s what I do best.”

With one last glare, Emma turned away from him, snagging the map and studying it just a moment before trudging off East.

—

Of all the stupid ass ideas she’s had in her life, this one had to be the dumbest. She doesn’t like relying on anyone else. Or being forced to  _be around_ someone else. So why in the name of hell would she sign up for a TV show where she was stuck with one person 24/7 for three fucking weeks?

And, oh, god, the people at home who would watch this. Of course it would be edited to make her look even crazier than she objectively was being. And Killian would look like the hero, AKA the exact opposite of what she wanted. She’d come here to prove that  _she_ could survive when you took everything away. Everything.

_No weapons… no friends… no hope. Take all that away and what’s left?_

_Me._

Oh, god. Was she hallucinating Buffy scenes? And not even positive ones. Sure, Buffy kicked some ass after that, but then she lost… everything.

Emma’s whole life had been lost. Why did she think she needed any more?Because Lost Girls end up in the jungle of Neverland. Apparently.

And pushing away a dude who has done nothing but try to do like the show is meant for an survive as a team? Downright idiotic. But she’s backed herself into a bit of a corner now, storming off like that. And there’s a reason they say Pride is the deadliest sin. It makes you do the dumbest shit, and - worst of all - to stick to it like burrs on a sheepdog. So she found a little hill away from the storm runoff and she built a shabby little shelter (too exhausted for the expert work of the first shelter, which, by the way, had mostly withstood the storm to this point, thank you very much). She failed to start a fire, which wasn’t surprising, and the rain started up again before sunset, so she curled up on her “bed” of fronds and dreamed of chewing down a heart of palm or a snake or really anything at this point because fantasizing about grilled cheese and onion rings might actually be the one that would inspire her to tap out and run. 

For a few hours she faded in and out of sleep, disturbed by noise and pain and the shame of having treated Killian the way that she did. And had been this whole time. It wasn’t  _his fault_  he was so damn attractive. It wasn’t  _his_  fault that he was making her feel things she promised herself she would never again let herself feel. _If only_  it was his toned abs and quite frankly impressive cock that had scrambled her brain the first day they met. No, the nudity wasn’t really even a factor, since, you know, she kind of knew it was part of the deal. But she’d been expected an asshole. Or an idiot. Or someone that was just so platonic that they might as well have been a woman. Or a lamp. 

But he was kind and funny and caring and she just  _knew_  he had a backstory that could rival hers because faces like that - and bodies like that - absolutely did not build good character when adversity never struck. Nope, that man has suffered.

With all that suffering between them, how they hell did they end up -  _voluntarily_  - stranded in a jungle?

( _We accept the love we think we deserve_.)

Ugh. Now she was haunted by Pinterest memes. 

Protein. She needed some protein, like, now.

When the sun came up, her sole focus was on nutrition. She needed something to eat. Her emotions were running too high and emotional calories were definitely more draining than physical calories. Or something. How had all of her survival research and training just fall out of her head by Day 2? 

_Because your brain needs sleep and nutrients to properly process and recall information._

(See, some of it hadn’t left.)

Apparently her sense of balance had left, though, because without warning her ankle rolled to the side and Emma slid off the tree she’d been climbing and her body hit every limb on its way back to Earth. 

_Well, shit_ , was the last thing she thought before she smacked into the rock below her, the warmth cascading down her torso the last feeling she had before her eyes slid shut.


	2. The Getting Found Part

 

crrreeeaaaaak

snap!

squeeeeaaaaal

THUNK

 

_fuck_.

Killian's bare feet pounded the Earth at a rate that far exceeded his current capabilities. Exhausted and still  _pissed_  and without any real nutrition, he shouldn't be doing more than lying  against a tree and drowning his sorrows in dirty rain water, but those sounds that just practically echoed through the jungle? That was definitely his maddening, headstrong, obnoxious, broken, brave, idiotic, beautiful partner falling out of a goddamn tree.

He'd heard her climb it. She hadn't actually gone far after she'd stormed off and scrapped together her own shelter. They didn't really have enough energy in them to be wandering, so it made perfect sense. And she'd probably been hungry. And pissed. And decided to go hunting. 

And it's not like he could have offered to help. Noooo, that was the problem to begin with, wasn't it? She wanted to go it alone. (On a show designed for  _two fucking people_ ; god he was never going to stop fuming over that.) So he left her to herself. He trusted her. Why wouldn't he? She absolutely was capable of surviving on her own, of that he was sure. 

But you can't predict the accidents that happen when your brain is muddled and your heart is on fire. 

Speaking of accidents and brain-muddle, maybe running wasn't the best idea? Nah. Walk. Walking was less dangerous.

"Swan!" Though her fall had been audible - she was definitely close - it wasn't clear  _in which direction_. And the fact that she wasn't crying, moaning, screaming... well, that was concerning. 

"Swan!" His voice was cracking like a twelve year old lad's but the seconds ticking by were only further convincing him - and the medic staff behind him it seemed - that Emma Swan was going to be the show's first fatality.

"SWAN!"

"God, shut UP, Kilian," a strained voice whined from a few yards ahead.

_Thank fucking Christ_. 

"Emma, what the bloody hell were you - "

"Mr. Jones, please step back while we assess your partner," one of the producers so diplomatically requested. 

"I'm  _fine_ ," Emma practically growled, her teeth clenched and the deepest scowl he'd ever seen marring her now very dirty face.

"The blood would suggest otherwise, there, Swan."

And boy was there a lot of blood. Her torso and legs seemed to get the brunt of it, scratches and scrapes covering the left half of her.  

"It's just - groan - superficial," Emma groaned as she tried to steady herself to stand.  

"Miss Swan! Lie back down!" the medic shouted in a thick accent. "You need to be assessed." 

"UGGHHH!"

She probably used three quarters of her remaining energy on making that sound of disgust, but Emma.... Emma was a stubborn one. And she apparently was going to make her distaste unknown, even at her own detriment.

"You two might make for good TV, but I swear if you die and we get sued..." the producer half-ranted near but not  _at_  Emma. It wasn't clear if he even realized he was speaking aloud, but whatever. It was offensive. Especially because "make good TV" was definitely a signal that they were going to do some heavy editing on this episode, and god knows what exactly that would end up looking like. One of them would be cast as the villain, and with Emma bleeding, it was certainly going to be him. 

Though she was the one yelling more often. So maybe her? No. It couldn't be. That definitely was not something he wanted to see. 

And didn't want to know how that would affect her. Not well, for sure. 

That's the problem with signing up for an event like this to work through your personal issues. It's effective, certainly. But at what cost?

More personal issues, probably. 

"Ouch!" Emma shouted, the medic's hands now running down her left side.

"The cuts, they aren't deep. But you do run risk of infection by staying out here. The choice is yours." 

The medic was speaking to Emma - at first - but turned very pointedly at the pacing producer once he got to that 'choice' part. 

"You can't risk infection, Swan," Killian offered, his voice quiet as if to show he was speaking to her on a personal level and not as part of this ridiculous reality show. 

Emma's eyes were closed and she was breathing hard through her nostrils, almost like she was trying to center herself. Or maybe imagine she were anywhere but here.  

"... I can't quit, Killian. I just - I have to do this." 

There was a brief pause, a heaviness in the air as all parties (save for the howler monkeys) were silent.

Then: "You heard the woman. All right, let's get out of their hair. Camera 1 - come in close. Emma, you'll need to film a confessional on your own camera once you're back to camp. Preferably your  _original_  camp."  

Just as quickly as the team had descended, they disappeared into the jungle, leaving a worried Killian and a still-bleeding Emma to figure out how they were going to last until Day 21. 

(And how they were going to address - or pointedly ignore - the blowup that occurred less than a day ago.)

"Fuck everything!" Emma screamed, the cameraman chuckling just enough that he knew there'd need to be an audio edit on top of a very long BLEEP to mask her profanity.  

How much of this stupid show's budget went to blurring their frustrated words and their private bits? Probably all of it, since the accommodations weren't exactly 5-star.

He reached his hand down to help Emma to fully stand and kept his grasp on her elbow to keep her from slipping as they trudged through the thick vegetation around the tree that felled her. Once they reached the camp, he helped lower her against a rock, leaning with her right side against the dirt to avoid further contamination of her wound. It being a brief intermission in the marathon of a storm they're experiencing, rebuilding a fire might not be totally impossible. So he set out to do just that, gathering small pieces of tinder that had been buried under other stuff, hopefully shielding it enough from the wet in order for it to burn. He reassembled the pump drill and got to work on the friction part, praying to any God that might listen that he get something to catch. 

"Why aren't you lecturing me," Emma whispered after what had probably amounted to 30 minutes of silence. 

(She was really the only thing that could break his focus.) 

"Why  _would I_  lecture you?" 

"... because I'm an idiot?" 

_Hah._  

"Yeah, well, welcome to the club, Swan. Though, to be fair, I think we were both branded lifetime achieving idiots when we shed our clothes and traipsed into a jungle with a stranger. Don't you think?"

For the first time in days her lips twisted upward, just a hint of a smile tugging at her features. 

"OK but I went a little extra on the idiot. A  _little_." 

"Only because I snapped. We're a team and I should have done better at... I don't know, being your partner and not your keeper." 

She scoffed and ran her fingers through her messy hair (it would have been so much more convenient for her to have cut it before this adventure, but he found himself appreciating the fact she didn't). "I think sometimes I need a keeper. I don't exactly... play well with others. Or others don't play well with me. I don't know. Things go bad. I don't know whose fault it is. But I'm ... I'm not letting  _this_  be one of those things that goes bad."

"You mean, aside from the shredded thigh you've got going on there."

"Yes, Captain Obvious, aside from that." 

"Ooooh, I quite like when you call me Captain." He tried to wink, but there's no way his protein-starved muscles made any kind of attractive expression.

She still laughed.

 

-

 

Thank fucking Christ that it had stopped raining. The fire was going again. The mosquitoes were... less. Not gone, though, and her usually very creamy pale skin was pocked with angry red dots that itched like you wouldn't fucking believe.

And, oh yeah, there were those  _other_  angry red marks from where she fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

_On the way down I saw you, and you saved me from myyyyself. And I won't forget the way you loved me_. 

Dear god, she was singing mid-00s emo-pop in her head and yeah, she really needed some fucking food.

She'd tried some gathering again and got them some fruit. And Killian had chopped down a tree like the lumberjack saving Red Riding Hood and they got themselves some heart of palm. So it's not like they were going to die. 

But, god, did she just want to die. Mostly of embarrassment at this point. Between the flipping out, the falling, and the over-confessing, she was drained of things to be embarrassed of.

(And don't forget the nudity. The on-camera nudity. Yeah, the wiggly bits would be blurred, but that didn't mean the cameramen, the producers, the medics - and Killian - didn't see all the unedited goodness. And badness.) 

Not being able to pull her weight was driving her  _mad_ , though, so she set to weaving a basket for a fish trap that Killian might be able to place (no way she was getting in that water and dying of some crazy grossness getting in her yet-to-be-scabbed-over scrapes). 

"Ah, Swan! Busy at work, I see!" Killian shouted, his way of announcing himself as he returned to camp from gathering firewood (he'd scared the metaphorical pants off her just the day before -  _you could have been a jaguar! - worried I'd pounce, love?_ )

His innuendos and flirt behavior were getting more frequent, but it made for a good distraction. A distraction from her pain, from their hunger and strandedness, and - most of all - from the fact that she didn't  _hate_  this whole  _partner_  thing, after all. 

With her not at full-speed, they've been more forced to divide the labor, to talk things out, to  _let_  Killian do something that Emma very much had the capability in some way to do, but  _chose_  not to.  

Just because you could didn't mean you should.  

(Or that you had to.) 

 

Sleeping had been hard the night after her injury. Training herself to not roll where she shouldn't was difficult, especially because she preferred to sleep on her left side on a normal night. But it was thankfully dry and Killian's fire was roaring, and they were able to just have some pleasant conversation until they drifted off to the lullaby of the monkeys and the bugs. 

She'd probably only slept an hour total but that hour had been legitimately restful, so it was a check in the 'win' column there.

Only the next day saw more rain. A lot more rain. Enough, in fact, that the fish trap Emma had built and Killian had placed had just.... washed away. 

Fuck.

 

That night was even  _worse_. They were wet, fireless, and so deeply uncomfortable. Visualizing somewhere warm and full of pillows had stopped working right after sunset and Killian's constant groans every time he had to shift to keep from shivering to death were annoying her to pieces. So she made the obvious suggestion. 

"Uh, Jones? Wanna cuddle?"

She expected a witty retort or an innuendo, but the poor man was just miserable enough that all he did was crawl over to her and throw his arm over her waist, his belly pressed against her back. He mumbled something incoherent and all she could do was chuckle at him. 

Hey, it was only fair she'd provide the warmth via cuddles since he'd provided it through fire before the storm resumed.

Sleep wasn't great that night, either, her mind so focused on the rain and the growling belly and her still very painful scrapes to even be concerned with the soft cock resting between her ass cheeks.

 

When she awoke in the morning after what amounted to only a nap's worth of sleep, that cock was definitely no longer soft and in any other situation that would  _mean_  something, but here? It didn't mean much besides 'thank god one of us actually slept well enough to dream.'

For which she was very appreciative. 

"Morning, sleeping beauty," Emma mumbled when Killian finally started stirring, his nose rubbing against her neck like he was scratching an itch or warming and appendage.  

"Ah, so we all agree that I'm beautiful," he mumbled in return, scooting away from her and poking his head past the fronds to see what kind of damage they were looking at. 

"Yeah, we're almost flooded." 

Not new information.

God this place sucked.

"What the hell are we going to do today?" she grumbled, knowing damn well there wasn't going to be much.  

"You don't think we should just... chill?"

"I don't know how to chill without access to Netflix. And don't you dare make a sex joke right now because I would never dishonor Netflix by fucking through it instead of watching."

"Damn. Down, girl. I won't insult streaming serial killer docs and orgies." 

"What the hell do you watch that you think that's all Netflix is?"

"I'm pleading the fifth." Killian grinned at her like they were in on some inside joke, and really, weren't they? Wasn't this all one big inside joke? No one else had this experience. Not even the cameramen who might film them or the producers "directing" or the viewers watching. This was  _theirs_.

It had been a long time since she shared anything with anyone else. Let alone something special. Or intimate. 

(Oh, she'd been naked with guys  _plenty_ , but it wasn't nudity of the fucking  _soul_.)

They kept trading jabs for a long while before falling into companionable silence, Killian humming at times and Emma playing drums on the side of her belly that wasn't full of gashes.  

How long had it been since she'd had a chance to just  _be?_  And with someone else on top of it? 

"I'm glad they picked you to be my partner, Jones." It was an out-of-nowhere confession and it left her vulnerable to a whole hell of a lot of jokes from Mr. Chuckles over there. But he took the high road. 

"Same here, love. Same here."

 

-

 

That night marked the beginning of the end, unfortunately. Swan was a fighter, but there were some things you just couldn't stop.

Around dusk, the fever set in. The wounds on her thighs were hot to the touch, the scrapes at her ribs starting to ooze. She was going to be pulled - there was no avoiding it - but Emma wasn't having it.

"Killian, I'm fine. I'll heal. We're doing so good!" she whisper-shouted, a shiver wracking her body that had nothing to do with the rain or the nakedness. No, there was no denying now that infection had set in. 

"Emma, I'm begging you. Try to come to terms with it now. It's not your fault. But this isn't going to last."

"No!" she whined like a teenager getting grounded, but he couldn't judge her. Not when he could see her world was crashing around her. Without thinking, he scooted himself closer to her, fully enveloping her in his arms. She let out a sob - just a tiny one - before relaxing against him. 

The producers and medic were certainly on their way. They couldn't have Emma die of sepsis, all for a dramatic episode.

 

And he'd been right. They swooped in just minutes after Emma curled against him. She put up a fight - of course she did - but they made it clear that this was no longer her choice. She was being medically pulled from the game. She bitched and grumbled and whined and after finally agreeing that she'd rather  _not die_  than complete her challenge, she looked right into a camera and shouted, "this better not drop my fucking PSR!" and started storming off. 

The medic caught her, of course, and asked her to lie down on a stretcher. It was  _procedure,_ after all. 

"Just pretend you're Cleopatra being carried to her throne, love," he joked as she lay down, her wounds now covered with gauze and antibiotic, most likely.  

She rolled her eyes but  _almost_  smiled.

"Try not to have too much fun without me." Her voice was sadder than he'd actually heard before. Or maybe not sadder, but it was... something. Different.  

"Ha! You think I'm staying here without you? Bullocks. I didn't sign up for a solitary confinement experiment here. I'm out of here." 

At that, she shot upright, to the deep annoyance of the medic. "You can't! You have to last the 21 days! It's why you came here."

His face was hot and his ear was itchy and he should just shut up, but couldn't really help the over-honest response from spilling out his mouth. "Why you start something isn't why you finish it. Or  _don't_  finish it. Sometimes you - well, I mean -  _people_. Sometimes people find something bigger than what they were looking for.

Emma's jaw dropped - as he thought it might - and she was painfully silent. Then and the whole trek to extraction. And the boat ride. She'd smile at him and acknowledge his overall existence, but she didn't use any of her words and it was maddening. 

But the poor woman was battling something that in all reality  _could kill her_  so he couldn't exactly begrudge her for not addressing the fact that he kind of indicated he may have some warm and fuzzy feelings toward her. 

(God, he probably loved her, but she didn't need to know that.)

 

Once back in the city, she was admitted to the hospital for treatment and he was technically released to return to his very boring, very clothed life. But he couldn't leave. Not without seeing her again. 

So he booked a hotel room and waited a few days for her to hopefully start to feel better and then he walked into the hospital seeking out the room number he'd bribed a member of the production team to give him.

When he found her she was awake but lying in bed, an iPad perched on her food tray in front of her. 

(Lord knows she loved her Netflix.)

"Swan! You're alive!" was the best he could do to announce his presence without announcing his... intentions.

"Jones! What the hell are you doing here? Shouldn't you be back in Boston, bar crawling for babes or something like that?"

"What exactly are you watching on that daft apparatus that would make you think I'd behave that way?"

She rolled her eyes in annoyance, but - like she often had in the jungle - she gave him just a bit of a smile.

And how fucking gorgeous that smile was when her cheeks were pink and her belly was (presumably) full and she was clean, dry, and not dying.

He left the ball in her court, suddenly more afraid than he'd ever been on  _Naked and Afraid,_ just waiting to see if she might actually want to know him as a human being outside of a survival situation or if their time in the jungle was nothing more than a bromance of convenience. 

They were both silent, probably for too long. She tapped a few times on her iPad and then closed the case on it, finally looking him up and down. 

"Fuck. How is it that you're even hotter  _with clothes on_?!"

Huh. Not the reaction he was expecting. 

"See something you like, love?" 

"I know  _you_  see something you like." 

_Pause_.

"Are you seriously teasing me for having a crush on you?"

"Of course I am. You just wait until our episode airs and I'm painted as the psycho bitch. Nobody has a crush on the psycho bitch, Killian." 

"I don't. I have a crush on a smart, determined, damaged, beautiful, stubborn, resourceful badass, who maybe had a silly meltdown once that led to a dangerous infection. But just that one time." 

"That  _you_  know of." 

She hadn't admitted any reciprocated feelings, but she wasn't tossing him out of the room, so that was probably a good sign? Right? 

"I don't like the assertion that you could ever duplicate the experience we just had together, love. It was one-of-a-kind, I'd say." 

She hummed and started picking at her nails, a nervous twitch he'd never seen before now.

"Oh, yeah. Definitely a one-time thing."

"Ha! Well... care to - I don't know - experience maybe some other one-time things with me? Perhaps? Just... not in the jungle. Unless that's what does it for you."

"Nah, definitely something that keeps you in that leather jacket.  _It_  does something for me." 

She smiled. And he smiled. And after completing the cycle from reluctant partners to enemies to friends to something else, Killian finally sauntered over to her hospital bed and planted a solid kiss right on her still-smiling lips.

 

_Funny the things you can find when you weren't looking to begin with._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm adding another chapter. I couldn't let the nudity concept go by without some... dirty stuff.


End file.
